Opuntia littoralis (Englem.) Cockerell                        =Opuntia littoralis var. littoralis Cactaceae (Cactus Family)   Native   Coastal Prickly Pear   Prickly Pear

                                           May Photo

Plant Characteristics:  Somewhat woody plants with short-jointed stems, suberect or sprawling, commonly 3-6 dm. high and of greater diam., without a trunk; joints green, narrowly obovate or narrowly elliptic, 12-22 cm. long, 7-10 cm. wide; spines over the entire plant, some gray, some yellow, some mixtures of these and red, 3-4.5 cm. long, 5-11 per areole, 22-36 areoles; inner perianth yellow to dull red; filaments orange-yellow; style pink or red, stigma yellow-green to green; fr. 3.5-5 cm. juicy, dark red-purple throughout.

Habitat:  At low elevs., Coastal Sage Scrub, etc.; Santa Barbara Co. s. getting inland ca. 15-40 miles.  Channel Ids.; Mex. May-June.

Name:  Opuntia is an old Latin name used by Pliny, formerly belonging to another plant.  Littoralis means "of the seashore."  (Dale 88).

General:  Very common in the study area.  Photographed in Big Canyon and along Back Bay Dr. between Big Canyon and the old Salt Works dike.  (my comments).      The fruits called tunas, by the Spanish Americans, are edible.  Relished by the Indians, they are still eaten today.  Great care and some skills are required to remove all of the bristles.  After removing the spines and skin, the fleshy pads, called nopales, are sliced and eaten.  If you wish, you can make Cactus Candy by soaking 1/2 inch slices of the tunas overnight in cold water and simmering slowly in a syrup of 3 cups sugar, 1/2 cup water, 2 tbs. orange juice and 1 tbs. lemon juice until the syrup is almost absorbed.  (Dale 88).     After soaking in water, Indians and early pioneers of the southwest used the split, fleshy pads, of these cacti for binding wounds and bruises.  In Mexico the pads are boiled and crushed, the juice being added to white wash and mortar to make it stick more securely.  (Balls 36).     Cacti of the flat-stemmed variety were a staple of the Indians of most western states.  The Blackfeet of the northern plains eliminated warts by rubbing the young spines into them.  The Navajo picked the fruit of the Prickly Pear with great reverence.  To appease the spirit they believed inhabited the plant, they offered the plant a hair from the gatherer's head in sacrifice.  In Mexico, the Prickly Pear is represented on the silver peso, the state flag, and on the Arms of the Republic.  Mexican folklore states that in 1325 the Aztecs were being pursued by a hostile people when then came upon an eagle strangling a snake atop a Prickly Pear.  The Aztecs interpreted this as a good sign, perhaps a symbol of their eventual victory over their adversaries, and decided to settle at that site-the present location of Mexico City.  The fruits, seeds and stems serve as food for many different kinds of animals.  Rodents, in particular, eat the seeds for food and often chew the pads for moisture.  Sheep and deer browse on them also.  Birds especially feed on the fruit, while the Cactus Wren makes its nest in the branches of certain species.  Many Opuntias are on the rare and endangered plant list for California and should not be picked.  (Clarke 103,104,105).     A white beetle that infests only Opuntia species was the original source of red dye for the Indians.  (lecture by Charlotte Clarke, author of Useful California and Edible Plants of California, April 1987.     My old mentor, John Johnson, who grew up on a ranch in what is now Anaheim, recalls an area near the Carbon Creek Flood Channel that had never been cultivated; he said the cactus was taller than a man in some places and that its blooms, while mostly yellow, occasionally were reddish or a combination of red and yellow.  He said that when the City of Anaheim converted the area to a waste water disposal area, that the men on the caterpillar tractors were hidden behind the large stands of cactus they were destroying. (my comments).           The fruits of the Indian Fig were eaten raw after being peeled and the spines taken off.  A good syrup was made by boiling the peeled fruits and straining out the seeds.  Another use of the plants was to gather the cactus leaves (pads), and to cut them into strips to serve as a vegetable.  The Indians gathered the fully ripe fruits and dried them.  After the seeds were winnowed out, they were stored to be made into a flour.  (Bauer 55).        Highly variable, hybridizes with other species of the same chromosome number.  Hickman, Ed. 455.       Delfina Cuero, a Kumeyaay or Southern Diegueno Indian, made the following comments about Opuntia littoralis in her autobiography:  "We eat the fresh fruit and fry or boil the young green pads.  All types of Opuntia were eaten in these ways."  (Shipek 94).

Text Ref:  Hickman, Ed. 455; Munz, Calif. Flora 315; Munz, Flora So. Calif. 317; Roberts 17.

Photo Ref:  Dec 1 82 # 17,18; Jan 1 84 # 10,11; May 1 87 # 24.

Identity: by R. De Ruff.  

First Found:  December 1982.

Computer Ref: Plant Data 206.

No plant specimen.

Last edit 6/9/05.

                               October Photo                                                                      January Photo